A couple of weeks ago when I issued a post entitled “We’ve Met the Future of Intelligent Assistance and It is Us,” I was taken aback by a series of skeptical comments from experienced customer care professionals. The gist was summed up nicely by a Spanish Contact Center Technology executive whose succinct comment was “increased automation and self-service rates without a decline in customer satisfaction..????”

Later in the comment stream, the same exec asks, “What percentage is that?”

There is no single answer to his mathematical question, especially when you take into account the needs of different vertical industries and the variety of delivery channels for intelligent assistance. For both automation (self-service) rates and customer satisfaction (measured most often in net promoter scores) “Your mileage may vary.” While that may be true, as we surveyed a dozen solutions providers and hundreds of real-world use cases, we see consistent enough results to lead us to conclude that prospective implementers can reasonably expect a 20% increase in self-service rates, while at the same time observing a material increase in customer satisfaction.

Contact center and customer experience veterans have a hard time accepting the new reality. Automated self-service in the form of interactive voice response (IVR) systems entered the enterprise world to deliver cost savings at scale. Over the next 30 years, they evolved from talking front-ends to automated call directors (ACDs) to conversational platforms capable of understanding complete sentences and then resolving customer issues when possible or routing conversations to the company representatives who can.

Then along came Apple’s Siri, a mobile virtual assistant that has demonstrated what an untuned general platform can accomplish for mobile subscribers. Its success attracted company from other “on-device” assistants from Google, Nuance, SoundHound’s, SpeaktoIt (ai.ai), Amazon.com and a dozen others around the globe, including Chinese search giant Baidu’s Duer. They are conditioning a broad spectrum of individuals to get results from automated assistants by talking or texting their input using their own words.

Enterprise Intelligent Assistants are the in-house counterparts to such on-device resources. When customers or prospects call a support line or visit the company Web site, they have confidence that they can get positive results from the resident intelligent assistant or automated chat agent. It’s a fact that customer experience professionals must be poised to take advantage of.

5 Reasons Why IAs are Vital to Successful Customer Experience

• They quickly and effortlessly handle your most frequent contacts: Low effort is key to the “higher automation/higher satisfaction” mantra.
• They employ input from your best reps and agents: They keep current employees in the mix by enlisting their aid and providing “intelligent escalation” when it is time to transfer a call or “move to live chat,” for the more complex, high-value calls.
• They fulfill on the promise of personal service: Taking real-time information into account (starting with location and device characteristics, but adding history, payment preferences and the like for authenticated individuals).
• They respond to the competitive pressure toward digital (multi-channel) support: Intelligent Assistants can be the focal point for your multi-channel or omnichannel digital marketing or customer care strategy, providing personalized service that supports the company’s brand.
• Finally, the general public is learning to trust their intelligent assistants. At the same time, the community of IAs is growing fast and adding areas of expertise all the time. Customer experience professionals have known for some time that there are areas like “promise to pay” in the billing domain or checking the status of a shipment where automated handling is a preference.

Now we can anticipate that their automation comfort zone will grow as IAs demonstrate their value for firms and government agencies of all size. Success breeds success and customer care specialists, just like customers or prospects, should be poised to take advantage.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: customer care, virtual agents, intelligent Assistants, Customer service, CX